Rules for SEO to Dominate in 2018

Are the SEO rules changing all that much in 2018? Kind of, but the fundamentals will obviously remain. It will still be impossible to game the system. Taking shortcuts and cutting corners is definitely off the table. Hard work is critical if you would like to be successful with SEO in 2018.

Know the truth. Realize that understanding search engine optimization and knowing how to use it effectively takes time. Google’s algorithm has rules that number in the hundreds, which is why it is hardly surprising that it can all get quite confusing. If you wish to stay ahead of the SEO curve in 2018, you have to put in a lot of time and effort to deliver any real value.

If you plan to dominate SEO in 2018, you need to be aware of many rules, but 7 stand out. Ensure that you pay special attention to the following rules if youwould like to dominate the SERPs in 2018.

Produce Quality Content That Offers Value

You must always generate quality content and not take any shortcuts when doing it.Google is getting increasingly better at finding and recognizing the quality content.When it comes to content, you should not try to game the system. Instead, you shouldmake an effort to produce great content. If you do this, your website with be rewardedwith a higher volume of traffic. Excellent content is that which engages visitors andmakes them motivated to want to share it.

You should focus on the following elements when creating your content:

Write the content in a natural and organic way for humans while still paying attention to the requirements of the search engines.

Test the Page Speed and Make Any Necessary Improvements

Google’s free PageSpeed Insight can help you determine what areas of the websiteneed improving. If you substantially increase the page speed of your website, you willbe able to improve your visibility significantly. You can also use tools like Pingdom,GTMetrix, and Varvy.

Any kind of page speed enhancement done should try to improve the following areas:

– Enable compressions like GZip

– Reduce your usage of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML wherever possible

– Use image optimizers such as Compressor.io to ensure that all images areoptimized

– To ensure that page elements are served faster, make use of browser caching

– Get rid of any render-block CSS and any JavaScript above the fold of your website

– Reduce the response time of your server to requests

Use CDN for your domain and DNS whenever possible to ensure that your content is served quickly

Using content delivery networks (CDNs) like Cloudfront by Amazon is critical to serve your content to users quickly no matter where they are located. CDNs are capable of distributing content across various servers situated all over the world by mirroring it and then serve the content from the server closest to the user.

Speeding up the DNS propagation times is another reason why you need to consider getting your DNS moved to CloudFlare or a configuration of similar type. DNS propagation tends to lag depending on your registration as well as server location versus where the DNS request originates from.

Ensure Responsiveness & Usability Across Mobile Devices

Mobile searchers outpace desktop searches these days. It is thus important to focus on responsiveness and usability across mobile devices. According to a report by Search Engine Land, mobile searchers comprised close to 60 percent of the total number of searches in 2016. You should take the time to ensure that your website is properly optimized for all mobile devices and that it ca be easily used across different platforms by implementing a CSS library such as Bootstrap. You can even decide to build your own too.

Top Tip: Look at this guide publishes by Google about how to optimize your mobile sites better.

Focus on Providing a User Experience That’s Enhanced

It is important to ensure that you offer an excellent user experience. Offering a great user experience means making sure that the website is easy to use which will also help with conversion optimization of your website. The website should also be easy to navigate. It should be easy for users to search for and discover the content that they are searching for.

Here are a few tips for doing this:

– Make sure that you use breadcrumbs in your navigation

– Make sure that you implement fast site search

– Make sure that the main menu is easy to use

– Make sure that the website is not too rich in graphics

– Categorize your content using tags or categories

– Make sure that you don’t use too many pop-ups

Ensure Keyword Diversity By Using Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) refers to the technology used by Google in its Hummingbird search. It is the current iteration of the semantic-style searching the search engine uses. LSI allows Google to display the relevant content by understanding what users are looking for rather than attempting to return content based especially on a keyword. LSI is simply a fancy way of something in a different way.

For instance, it is possible to say “make money online” in several different ways like“generate income on the internet” or “earn cash on the Internet”, and so forth. Google is capable of recognizing that all these phrases refer to the same thing. You need to start using this in all the content you create. It will help you create organic and natural-sounding prose without it appearing to be stuffed with keywords.

Market Your Content by Leveraging Trusted Domains

When creating content, even when posting it on a trust domain, it is important to ensure that you use other authority websites to market it. Irrespective of where the content is published, marketing is one of the keys to effective SEO in 2018. Create other quality,useful content on authority sites like Quora, LinkedIn Publishing, or Medium and then have a link pointing back to the original anchor content.

Anurag Pareek is a Toronto based SEO & Digital Marketing Consultant. He is a creative link builder and conversion rate optimization specialist. When he is not obsessing over how to build better backlinks, Anurag likes to travel and play guitar.